Interview with The Honourable Stéphane Dion

And so I'm encouraged that, under Mr. Trudeau's leadership, our party is proposing to work with the provinces to create emissions reduction targets, and to put a price on carbon. 

You'll remember when I was leader of the party, the Conservatives attacked our plan to price carbon as a "job-killing carbon tax," the so-called job-killing carbon tax. But since then, none of them have been able to quote one study which shows that the revenue-neutral cabon tax that you have in British Columbia, for example, has killed jobs.

To the contrary, all of the research that has been done on this issue – by the WTO, researchers at MIT, and others – show that if it's done right, carbon pricing is good for the economy, not just the environment.

So I'm very disappointed, of course, with what Mr. Harper is doing, and I know Mr. Trudeau will do much more (to fight climate change). Now, if you ask me what would need to be done to prevent a 2 degree rise in the global average temperature, we cannot achieve that alone. I think we need a world carbon price to go there, but at least a Canada lead by Mr. Trudeau would start to be part of the solution, instead of being part of the problem.  

MH: This year is an election year, and while the fixed election date is set for October 19th, it can be argued that the major political parties have already begun campaigning.

What will the Liberal Party be doing to attract support from young voters heading into and during the 2015 Federal Election?

SD: I think we have a leader who is very inspiring to a lot of Canadians, but especially to young Canadians. He is well known, and he cares about the issues facing young people. He has met with thousands and thousands of young Canadians everywhere, and he is well received. So I think Mr. Trudeau himself will be an inspiration to increase voter turnout among youth in Canada.

The other point I would make is that, it's not only that Mr. Trudeau cares about issues that are important to young Canadians, but he actually intends to focus on those issues both during and after the election.

We just spoke about tuition fees and post-secondary education. And we mentioned the environment. Along with foreign policy and individual rights, these issues are at the core of what Justin and our party will be campaigining on, including creating jobs for youth.

And the last point I would mention is his committment to improve national youth volunteerism programs. When I was responsible for official languages, for example, it was very important to improve the exchange programs offered to youth in Canada. If you haven't experienced learning French in Canada, you should have that opportunity – it should be offered to all English-speaking young Canadians, and the same applies for Francophones. To have an experience in a community that is English speaking somehwere in Canada.